What you learn in workshops

Each of us has a unique way of interacting with dogs. Every touch, every look, every thought is imbued with our individual histories. Your touch, how you offer it, for expectations, and how you interpret the way it is received is yours and yours alone. Even though we share space, time and experiences, we can never really fundamentally understand what another is thinking or feeling. We are operating from and within different premises. You could never do my massage. I could never do yours.

So, do I, as your instructor, teach you my interpretation of PetMassage? I have given this a lot of thought over the years. It is impossible to perfectly replicate a canine massage experience either for us or the dogs. So, I teach two aspects that are so closely connected they can be visualized as the DNA double helix model. If you have one and not the other it will be an incomplete and only partially effective session.

Through our DVDs, books, home study courses and hands-on workshops, you learn 1.) the set of massage skills and body mechanics techniques that you need to safely administer/facilitate a physical canine massage plus 2.) an extraordinary awareness of your emotional and psychic connectiveness to your environments (internal and external) and your canine client.

These are the primary elements that are necessary in canine massage.

My goal as your instructor is to help you develop your own interpretation of what, from your perspective, PetMassage means and, from that premise, what you can do with it. In our hands-on workshops, you learn new ways of touching; new ways of listening; new ways of observing; and new ways of supporting the body-mind-spirit behaviors of dogs.

With this training, I am confident that the PetMassage you provide will be a perfect projection of who you are, what you can do and the best and most gracious of what PetMassage represents.

I’d like to share with you three of the comments that students wrote after our last Foundation Workshop:

This class opened me to a whole new way of thinking and feeling. -TP, AZ

I am (on Monday, the last day of the workshop) walking, thinking, and acting completely different compared to Thursday! This course provided multiple affirmations to my choice of career change, & I now am positive I have made the right choice. I’m extremely thankful for this experience & I would love to contribute additional knowledge through my case study! I can’t wait to get my new life started! J ♥ – RP, NC

I really can’t tell you or express how much this class meant to me. I wish I could spend a couple of weeks learning and observing as much as I could. 5 days was not enough for me. -HM, FL